Leaves of Absence
by X5thAvenueX
Summary: One by one, they all leave some way or another, each taking a little – big – piece of him with them. Soon he will be left with nothing.


**Leaves of absence**

No time frame really, as it doesn't follow the plot of the show. Tony's POV.

Disclaimer: I do not own NCIS.

* * *

It started with a girl, a death, a heartbreaking truth.  
Maybe with a lie, maybe with fear, maybe with an admission, maybe with an excuse.  
Officially it started with Kate.

She had his back and his friendship, and perhaps even his heart, but now they will never know.  
They were friends, or enemies, depending on when asked, and he grew to like her (to love her).  
Less than two years and one bullet later, she is gone, and he cries; a futile attempt to drain away the anguish.

Jeanne leaves, as quickly as she comes, and he is too proud (afraid) to ask her not to.  
It is over, burnt bridges, cut ties, and everything else the departmental shrink tells him; voice monotone, eyes bored with Tony's torment.  
Unlike with Kate, there is only himself to blame, making vengeance a little more difficult.

It isn't until Jenny dies that he finds himself running in his dreams. Here or there, maybe anywhere, but definitely somewhere, he is looking for a woman. For women.  
Each time, all he can find are coffins housing pale corpses that he think may once have been alive, faces twisted in fear or maybe just pain.  
They claw their way out of their graves, crying silently, and crawl into his bed (into his mind).  
He wakes with a start to find his room empty. (His heart empty).  
He has left them to rot in purgatory.

Gibbs couldn't live forever, and Tony was fully aware of that. (He did not think he was invincible).  
It is a shot to the head, just like Kate, and nobody misses the irony.  
They all blame themselves and each other, silently shouting, loudly ignoring, and it is the storm before the storm.

Abby can barely live without Gibbs, let alone stay, breathing the same air that he used to breathe, and dancing in his footsteps.  
In a fashion more Gibbs than Abby, she does not say goodbye, and he realises she actually left a while ago. (Nobody is surprised).  
Muted in grief, she sends no words, just a photograph, and the completed boat she stands beside proudly (brokenly) seems to signify the ending, or maybe the start, of something he cannot quite pinpoint.  
He tacks it to his wall, and if he ever finds himself on the coast of Mexico, he will look for her, sailing aboard The Gibbs.

When Ducky dies a year later, it is not particularly tragic, nor is it heroic; just an old man, passing on peacefully in his sleep.  
Tony watches silently from the doorway as Jimmy performs the autopsy, and is ashamed to admit, when he is gone too, that he does not miss him quite as much as the others.

When Ziva tells him she is leaving, he does not ask her for an explanation, because he has seen it in her eyes (in his eyes) everyday for the past two years.  
Like a true warrior she does not cry, or try to make it something it is not; she simply tells him goodbye, in an infinite kind of way, and resolute, he lets her go. (He already misses her).

McGee stays six more months, but they do not talk, unable to hear each other over the roar of lamenting voices, coming from the ghosts that crowd the now empty bullpen.  
Tony cannot blame him (no matter how hard he tries), for McGee is a good guy, a good guy who met too many bad guys and saw too many bad things, and perhaps, somewhere along the way, forgot exactly what it meant to be a good guy in the first place.  
After a while, Tony stops reading the emails he dutifully sends every few months, the words stiff and awkward, and nothing but apologies to be found between the lines.

Now he has three new colleagues, and a new gun, and a new suit. He is amicable with Leon, and still cracks jokes and smirks and flirts, and if he is any different from before, then nobody notices. (He notices).  
He tries to find solace in being the last man standing. (It is in vein).

It started with a bullet, a boat, a desolate goodbye. Maybe with a man, maybe with a team, maybe with a job, maybe with nothing, anything, everything.  
It ends in dejection, depression, mourning, and misery, and all he has left now are memories, and a worn out copy of Deep Six.

* * *

Please review, not really sure if this one is any good or not.


End file.
